Sweeping Zen » Glenn Webbhttp://sweepingzen.com
The Who's Who of Zen BuddhismThu, 19 Feb 2015 15:23:18 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1Zen Priest or Zen Practitioner?http://sweepingzen.com/zen-priest-or-zen-practitioner/
http://sweepingzen.com/zen-priest-or-zen-practitioner/#commentsSat, 22 Feb 2014 00:26:47 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=97862This is an important question for Zen groups outside of Japan, founded and/or led by Japanese Zen priests. A quick answer to the question would be that Zen practitioners in Japan have always been priests. So talk of a Japanese non-priest Zen practitioner is nonsense. Non-priests do not “practice” Zen in Japan. The difference in ...

]]>This is an important question for Zen groups outside of Japan, founded and/or led by Japanese Zen priests. A quick answer to the question would be that Zen practitioners in Japan have always been priests. So talk of a Japanese non-priest Zen practitioner is nonsense. Non-priests do not “practice” Zen in Japan.

The difference in culture and practice between Japan’s 900-year-old history of Zen and America’s much younger version of it could not be greater. All three major denominations of Chinese Buddhism – Tantric, Zen and Pure Land – and most of their many lineages and divisions were transplanted in Japan by government decree in the 6th century.

From then until Meiji times, Japanese Buddhist priests were mainly responsible for performing funerals and running schools, two very important social tasks (that Buddhist priests in China did not have, by the way.) In theory this means that all Japanese learned to read and write in Buddhist schools and were cremated, given Buddha names, and sent on their way on the Wheel of Life by Buddhist priests.

Through most of history, Japanese priests have not taken on disciples who were not from priest families (something that also did not exist in China.) Although celibacy was demanded of priests on the Asian mainland, Japan was unique in doing almost the opposite: requiring priests to have families and produce children who were qualified by birth to take Buddhist priest vows.

Children of Japanese aristocrats, samurai, craftsmen and farmers were not expected to run temples. That was not part of their particular class responsibilities. In 1868 such feudal class distinctions were formally done away with, again by government decree. But in practice they did not die. And today almost any temple in Japan is run by the son of a priest (or by a man, orphaned at birth, who was given to a temple to be raised.)

Doctrinal differences did not matter in Japan too much, then any more than now, but allegiances of families in every neighborhood of the 49 prefectures have always been important. The names of those family members were registered then as they are now by denomination and neighborhood without anyone having a personal choice in the matter. Generations of temple families (danka) support the same temples as their predecessors. These danka members have records going back at least as far as most church records in Europe. (Interesting word, danka: 檀家 , meaning “sandalwood people”.)

There is an unwritten rule in all Japanese Zen temple traditions that no abbot can train his own son. He must send his son to another priest for training. Temple abbots only take as disciples the sons of other abbots of the same lineage. After four years (or at the abbot’s discretion) those disciples return to their home temples as next abbot in line.

Make no mistake about it: Zen training in Japan is very tough, and I found that most young men in training with me hated every minute of it. But I also noted that after four years many had mellowed, after reaching considerable depths of spiritual insight. At the same time some of them were not looking forward to the life of domesticity and responsibility ahead of them. They will not expect to find potential disciples in the non-priest world, nor will people in that world have any interest in the meditation that changes lives.

I realize this is not exactly the image that Chinese Zen records give of Zen practice. Master to student transmission there did not depend on who your parents were. It has always mattered in Japan. I’ve heard American students training in Japan complain that they think the purest Zen teachings get lost in the Japanese Zen shuffle because of things like that. Such teachings are not lost, of course, even in Japan, but hold that thought.

You don’t have to be a Zen priest to practice Zen in this country. How lucky are we not to have to be pigeon-holed in such a way that we have no choice! I say Hooray for the Beats and Hippies who went knocking on Zen temple doors in Japan. To the question of whose Zen is the True No Way (Mu, get it?), priest’s or layman’s, this lay-priest says “No Way!”

I consider myself a lay priest because after I founded the Seattle Zen Center in 1970 and took academic posts at Pepperdine in Malibu (1988) and Bukkyo in Kyoto (1995) I stopped training others. I have ordained four priests in the Cold Mountain (寒山) lineage, including the very able Kurt Spellmeyer (寒感). Two others have died, leaving their students to fend for themselves, and another still practices but never took on students herself. Dozens of people who trained with me or took my classes at the University of Washington have gone on to be priests of Japanese-sanctioned temples or lay priests.

Aside from the cultural and technical differences between being a priest or practitioner, I worry about priests who seem not to know how dangerous being a priest can be. Zazen is not for everyone. Students whose egos are not strong and healthy can go into even deeper depression than they started with. Good priests must be wise beyond erudition and insight. But then, so must ordinary practitioners.

We’re past the point of no return of worshiping a guru-priest with a Japanese face. Can you imagine what the benefit will be if all Americans began to sit, individually and with others, in zazen? That’s not the goal, but if people could just turn down the volume on themselves and hear transmissions of pain and joy from all sentient beings, what a day of rejoicing that would be!

We have two Suzukis who erected the pillars of American Zen. Suzuki Daisetsu — who came out of the Jodo Shinshu group of Pure Land Buddhism (and for that reason is dismissed by all three forms of Japanese Zen!) — clearly laid the intellectual framework of Zen for all of us. Suzuki Shunryu, a bit later, laid out the most approachable mission to foreigners by Japanese priests, teaching by example the way of Zen.

For fifty years now groups of non-Japanese sit regularly under the direction of an experienced practitioner. But that happens less and less often now under a Japanese priest. It is out of that mix that Zen Americans got started. We’ve been through fire and rain, but we’ve gotten cooler and drier, finally. I hope we don’t miss the opportunity to let everyone wake up without making such a fuss over the priesthood. In the end we are all sandalwood people, realizing together our self-as-other-ness.

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/zen-priest-or-zen-practitioner/feed/11Shimano Archive: Kangan Glenn Webb on Genki Takabayashihttp://sweepingzen.com/kangan-glenn-webb-on-genki-takabayashi/
http://sweepingzen.com/kangan-glenn-webb-on-genki-takabayashi/#commentsThu, 29 Nov 2012 06:56:43 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=78565The Shimano Archive, maintained by The Rev. Kobutsu Malone, is becoming an extraordinarily important source of information for journalists — providing documentation on the sometimes unseemly side of Zen practice here in the West. The Archive recently published an unsolicited email from Kangan Glenn Webb sent to Malone from August 16, 2010. In the email Webb, a recepient ...

]]>The Shimano Archive, maintained by The Rev. Kobutsu Malone, is becoming an extraordinarily important source of information for journalists — providing documentation on the sometimes unseemly side of Zen practice here in the West.

…I also became aware that open sexual couplings and marijuana use were part of the scene. Later, one of the couplings turned out to be Genki himself and a European female student. When she became pregnant she ultimately decided with his encouragement to have an abortion. I assumed that we would hold a traditional mizuko ceremony but he refused. So I conducted a private one for the woman. Most people in the house did not know about the pregnancy or abortion, and those who did never mentioned it.

To read the full email over at The Shimano Archive, please click here.

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/kangan-glenn-webb-on-genki-takabayashi/feed/17Webb, Dr. Glenn T.http://sweepingzen.com/webb-dr-glenn-t/
http://sweepingzen.com/webb-dr-glenn-t/#commentsWed, 20 Oct 2010 02:10:35 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=10754Dr. Glenn T. Webb (born 1935) is a professor of East Asian cultural and religious history, with a specialization in medieval Japan. He was born in 1935 in southwestern Oklahoma near the Ft. Sill Artillery base. He studied classical piano and had a promising career as a performer, until at seventeen he decided to devote ...

]]>Dr. Glenn T. Webb (born 1935) is a professor of East Asian cultural and religious history, with a specialization in medieval Japan. He was born in 1935 in southwestern Oklahoma near the Ft. Sill Artillery base. He studied classical piano and had a promising career as a performer, until at seventeen he decided to devote himself to a study of religions, and ultimately to the history and culture of Asia. In college he met and married Carol St. John (in 1955) and the two of them have been involved in Asian studies ever since (even while raising two sons.)

Dr. Webb was a graduate student and lecturer in the Art History and East Asian Studies program at the University of Chicago between 1957-1964. His main teachers there were Harrie Vanderstappen, Edwin McClellan, Joseph Kitagawa, and (briefly) Paul Tillich. For the next two years the Webb family lived in Kyoto, supported by a Fulbright while Dr. Webb did doctoral work at Kyoto University, guided by Professors Daisetsu Suzuki, Hisamatsu Shin’inchi, Masao Abe, Hasumi Shigeyasu, Mori Toru, Sawa Ryuken, and Doi Tsuigiyoshi. Under their mentorship Dr. Webb undertook Buddhist training in temples of Rinzai, Soto and Obaku Zen, as well as some temples of other Buddhist denominations. (He was ordained in the Kanzan lineage of Rinzai Zen in 1970 under Miyauchi Kanko Roshi.)

In 1966 Dr. Webb received a joint-appointment to the University of Washington’s School of Art and Jackson School of International Studies, where he co-directed the Center for Asian Arts and Kyoto Program. In 1970 he received his doctorate from the University of Chicago, and published his first book, a study of Late Medieval and Early Modern Japanese Art. The Webbs made Seattle their home during 1966-1987, but Dr. Webb spent part of almost each year in Kyoto (often accompanied by his wife and sons), where he taught, did research, and trained in Buddhist temples. Dr. Webb established the Seattle Zen Center at the University of Washington (long since evolved into the Great Plum Mountain temple of Chobozen-ji.)

In 1987 Dr. and Mrs. Webb moved to Malibu, California , where he became the director of the Institute for the Study of Asian Cultures (ISAC) at Pepperdine University. While there Dr. Webb invited many representatives of Asian governments and religions in Southern California to speak on campus. Even after the Webbs retired from Pepperdine in 2004 and moved to Palm Desert, CA, they have continued to maintain their connection with the academic institutions, and cultural and social organizations they served for so many years. Dr. and Mrs. Webb especially enjoy their on-going relationship as professors on the Kyoto and LA campuses of Bukkyo University, a Jodo-shu Buddhist school, as well as their positions as teachers of Urasenke tea.